There's no other way to describe it, Michigan is schizophrenic about marijuana.

Voters clearly want marijuana available for medical use, but local officials, politicians, law enforcement agencies and many in the medical community appear to be uncomfortable with the new law.

And there's no shortage of reasons why, starting with loopholes in the law that some critics say essentially legalize the drug.

For three years, officials and marijuana supporters have been debating how to implement the law with marijuana dispensaries or clubs sprouting in our communities while officials use moratoriums and develop zoning ordinances to ban them. Many communities, including Muskegon Township, are in court to stop dispensaries from operating. And the state Supreme Court will hear two cases on the issue this fall.

Between 80,000 and 100,000 Michigan residents have registered as medical marijuana users but many are afraid to be identified as such. Additionally, those “caregivers” who grow marijuana under the law to provide to others are in danger of arrest both from the state and the federal governments.

So what's it going to be? Can Michigan residents use marijuana to relieve nausea, increase appetite and deal with pain, or not?

All of this was brought to a head last week by an appeals court ruling that banned medical marijuana sales at a facility in Mount Pleasant and prompted the estimated 400 to 500 dispensaries in Michigan to shut down or risk being treated like criminals. But I've been thinking about this issue since a former high school classmate shared her story.

She has developed fibromyalgia, which is quite painful. She was uncomfortable with the narcotic painkillers she had been prescribed and was looking for alternatives. Although she had never used marijuana in her life, she decided to give pot a try.

She dutifully collected her medical records and took them to a “dispensary” in a seedy part of Lansing to start the process to be a registered user. As she sat in the waiting room, she realized that no one else seemed to have any medical records with them or appeared to be sick. And they all seemed to be quite a bit younger than her, college students she thought.

When it was her turn, the “doctor” took a cursory look at her records, took her hundred bucks and she was good to go. She ended her story by saying that after that experience she never used marijuana, it seemed criminal, she said as she showed us her official looking registered user's card.

I didn't tell her that a Michigan court had recently ruled that all records of Michigan medical marijuana users had to be turned over to the federal government, which does treat marijuana use as a crime.

I'm not ready to join fellow Chronicle columnist Steve Gunn in calling for the legalization of marijuana for all uses. But his argument is making more and more sense.

Are the long-term effects of marijuana any worse than those of beer, wine and liquor, which are legal? If marijuana was legalized would Michigan immediately turn into a state of potheads? What about all the money spent on what appears to be a losing battle in the war on drugs? In this economy there are many competing uses for such huge sums.

Gov. Rick Snyder wouldn't go there when the Chronicle Editorial Board asked him about the issue, not even to talk about the potential economic benefits of taxing marijuana sales. “It's my job to enforce the laws of the state,” he told us. “The voters clearly want medical marijuana, but that's not my issue. That's not why I ran. I'm focused on jobs and kids.”

And that's where our focus should be. The distraction and expense of the medical marijuana debate does nothing to create jobs nor does it help patients who should be having a legitimate discussion under the law with their doctors instead of being forced to skulk around like criminals.

Paula Holmes-Greeley is the editorial page editor at The Muskegon Chronicle. She can be reached weekdays at (231) 725-6354. Email: pholmes@muskegonchronicle.com. Cindy Fairfield's column returns on Sept. 4.